Mark 7:24-37
24 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” 30 And when she went home, she found the child lying on the bed and the demon gone.
31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went by way of Sidon toward the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus[h] ordered them to tell no one, but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
James 2:1-17
2 My brothers and sisters, do not claim the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory while showing partiality. 2 For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, 3 and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here in a good place, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit by my footstool,” 4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor person. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into the courts? 7 Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well. 9 But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. 11 For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but you murder, you have become a transgressor of[a] the law. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
My uncle ran away from home at the age of 16. He was running from his home in Winnipeg. Born in 1920, he lived his teenage years during what we now call the Great Depression. By the time 1936 rolled around his mother was struggling so greatly to feed him and his three older sisters that he thought running away would give her one less mouth to feed, one less burden to carry. He ended up doing what a lot of people did during that decade, jumping trains. With no work to be found in the West, he hopped on a train headed out East. Riding along the top of the train cars (which is just an insane thing to think about), he would often pass trains going by on the other set of tracks filled with other men headed out West. They were all looking for the same thing: food or money to get food.
Creation cries out: Love me!
Now my uncle did this for several years and needless to say he had plenty of experiences during this time. He would often tell my sister and I stories about those days and I haven’t been able to remember them all, but there is one that has stuck with me throughout the years. One night, he was looking for a place to rest. Exhausted from travelling and being turned down for work repeatedly, he headed back to the train station to find a place to sleep before the next train came in the morning. Because so many men were riding the rails, laws had been put in place that no one was allowed to sleep in train stations in order to prevent these small buildings from being overcrowded. But this one night, when he got to the small station building it was empty, no one was around guarding it. Filled with relief he snuck into the station and found a room that had a bench in it. After laying down, closing his eyes, and letting that feeling of calm settle in, the one you know when you’re finally going to be able to get some rest and let your guard down, he decided it was a great moment to whip out that PB&J sandwich he had been carrying around with him for a couple days. (I was young when I heard this story, but now I realize I have no idea what real hunger is) Just as he was about to take a bite out of that sandwich, in walked a dog. The dog wasn’t mean, the dog was actually friendly and just went up to him and sat down and stared, stared hungrily at his sandwich. In that moment my uncle became angry and frustrated, because if this dog started barking then authorities would come, and then goodbye relaxing place to rest and sleep. And he realized the only way to keep the dog from barking was to…feed it. So there he was, hungry and tired, and in walked this life and demanded of him what little he had.
Creation cries out: Love me!
In our gospel reading this morning we find Jesus on the run. He’s spent, exhausted, given all he has to the people of Israel, fed them with loaves and fish, welcomed them to tables with feasts, and now he needs some rest. He decided to make his way into Tyre, a Gentile region where less people will recognize him, where he will have less work to do because gentiles won’t bother hippie Jewish rabbis. When he arrives in the region, he enters a house quickly, he doesn’t want ‘anyone to know he was there’. Jesus is finally being able to take a breather, let his guard down, to just really restore… and then a gentile woman immediately comes into the house. He could not escape notice. He could stop that life force from finding its way to him. And prostrating at his feet, hungry for healing, she begs him to cast out the demon that her daughter has. And then Jesus, in a very human moment, gets angry and frustrated, and tries to refuse her and even insults her because she is demanding from him what little he feels he has left to give.
Creation cries out: Love me!
Just this past week, as I was having my morning coffee, I saw someone walk through my backyard. I ran out wondering what was going on. Turns out this man was paving a yard a couple houses down from me and needed to fill his bucket with water. After a few words I could tell not only was he not the boss of the operation, but he was mostly likely a migrant worker, he was definitely not from the area. Feeling the pressure, he had decided to just walk through backyards until he found a hose. I was angry and frustrated, thinking he can’t just do this, this is my property, this is my water, this is my ‘me’ time. I tried to summon what charitable feelings I had left in me to deal with him without cursing.
Creation cries out: Love me!
In life there are many situations and circumstances where we erect boundaries, often for what we believe to be our own good. I need rest so I need space, I need food so this is my portion and this is yours, I need a house so this is where I’ll dig up the land and over there it can be for the animals. I worship this God, so I’ll do it here in this space and you can worship your God over there. You can pray out loud in church but not at work. I’m human you’re an animal, I’m Jewish you’re gentile, I have a right to be in this property and you don’t. The boundaries we raise and live by aren’t necessarily bad, often they are just the reality of what our human selves need in order to cope with the experience of life on this planet. But here’s the thing, God did not create with boundaries, God created all life with love, and this love yearns only ever for one thing: to be in relationship.
Creation cries out: Love me!
Nothing on this planet can survive without having a relationship, whether that be air for breath, soil for growth, or creatures for support and care, we are all tied to this one web of life, this sacred manifestation of love made real when God cried out into being the world, ‘let there be, light, water, earth, creatures, plants, humans. And let them love me as I love them, let them love each other as neighbours whose source all comes back to me.’ So we may naturally erect boundaries of all sorts, time, race, religion, gender, class, cities, lands but they will always be sought to be broken down for the sake of fostering relationships by a
Creation (who constantly) cries out: Love me!
In the end my uncle did give that dog half of his sandwich, and even though it left him a little more hungry he had a companion who slept beside him for the night. I did let that man fill his bucket of water, and his repeated thankyous made it clear his life was going to be a little bit better when he got back to his crew. And Jesus did heal that woman’s daughter, and because of it other gentiles came to Jesus to have their ears opened and their tongues loosed. If we as Christians are to embrace the God of the bible, we must not only speak about relationships of love, we must also do the work to create them, and that work is not always easy. There are times when the created world cries out to us for relationship and we are tired, we are angry, we are hopeless, we are more concerned about our own needs than the needs of other creatures and other life forms like rivers and forests and fields. But if we can greet the call of creation when it knocks on our door (and the entire planet and all that lives in it is knocking pretty hard), if when creation steps in and disrupts our ways of being, calling to us to be present in each moment that we have, and are able to respond to this disruption with mercy, respond to it with love, then we will end up having more even if we have less, we will be rich even if we are poor, we will be inheritors of a kingdom even if we own nothing to our name. So on this first Sunday of Creation Time, may the Spirit move us to grow deeper in and strengthen the relationships with a
Creation (that) cries out (simply): Love me!
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